Medieval Belgian Town Installing A Beer Pipeline Because — Wait, A Beer Pipeline?!

Colin “My Waggling Eyebrows Are Hypnotizing” Farrell’s character was so wrong to be cranky about being stuck in Bruges in the movie In Bruges (pronounced “Brooooszh” in my head) — that city is about to be the first in Belgium to install its very own beer pipeline. I repeat: A beer pipeline.

Alas, all of our hopes of a beer sink in every home in Bruges are for naught, my friends — the medieval town in Belgium did approve the construction of a beer pipeline under the city, but only to link its 500-year-old De Halve Maan brewery to a bottling factory nearby that will send its liquid wares out to the far corners of the Earth, reports the AFP.

This will keep about 500 delivery trucks from mucking up the scenic views of the canals and rumbling down the cobblestoned streets, explains the company’s director, Xavier Vanneste, cutting down on about 85% of the total truck traffic.

“The idea is born of environmental and quality of life concerns, and not economic ones,” he explained.

The brewery will be on the hook for the cost of the pipeline, which will actually have four pipes, to help with the breweries efforts to clean and sterilize the pipe after every beer batch, Vanneste explained on the BBC World Service radio program that happened to come on air while I was typing up this story. (Editor’s note: It was really weird how that happened.)

And yes, the idea of thirsty citizens tapping into that pipeline to take a quick sip of beer is “the talk of the town,” he added. But it’s unlikely you’ll succeed.

“We’re quite confident we’ll be able to secure the pipe well enough; if there’s any leak or tapping, we’ll be able to detect it anyway,” he told the BBC.